‘Giant pierzoresistance’ awarded as a Nanoscale Hot Paper

‘Giant reversible nanoscale piezoresistance at room temperature in Sr2IrO4 thin films’, the research conducted by Prof Gustau Catalan’s Oxide Nanoelectronics Group, and with Dr Neus Domingo as the first author, has been appointed as a 2015 Hot Paper by Nanoscale magazine, following its very high scores during peer review.

During the research, the Group showed that the electrical conductivity of strontium iridate thin films can be increased by many orders of magnitude by pressing on the surface with the nanometric needles of an atomic force microscope (AFM). This phenomenon, called “giant piezoresistance”, makes iridates a good candidate for future applications in sensors and electronics.

When the results were published in February, the article was already widely covered online and in the media owing to the broad interest and spectacularity of the results. The recent mention as a Hot paper is valuable because it shows that, aside from its general interest, the results are also deemed relevant and of high quality by the main experts working in the field.